


Seed

by LadyProto



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: Appalachia, Class Differences, Class Issues, Classism, Coal Mining, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Other, Working Class, mining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:14:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26761924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyProto/pseuds/LadyProto
Summary: Sixteen Tons? Fuck you, Shinra. Her life is worth more than that.((Barret muses about the source of his anger, his reason to fight, and the precious child he holds in his arms))((Dedicated to my dad, my grandfather, and the Potato that gave me such an idea
Relationships: Barret Wallace & Marlene Wallace
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3





	Seed

**Author's Note:**

> ((I am not black. However, I am a POC from a small deserted mining town. I tried my best, and channeled my anger into this fic. If It is poorly written, or poorly expressed, I ask you to be kind. There is a slight universe alternation here, as I have Dyne dying in the mines vs being shot FOR the mines. I hope the reader understands this, as I have had family die in the mines due to company store exploitation. Please recognize class differences vs race differences. ))
> 
> ((Fic is dedicated to my grandfather, and my father, the latter of which a POC that lived through enough years in the coal mines to give me the following inspiration. At least one of these lines were said to me directly by him. ))
> 
> ((Things you may need to google: mantrip, company store, Bloody Harlan, and black damp, or you can wait to see the cut-paste explanation in the end notes.))  
> —-

I watch the bedside clock change. From half past 2:00, to 2:31. The mako lights blink out a ghoulish blue glow to the cracked ceiling. A little past 2:30 am. I wait. I breathe. I feel the fingers of my missing arm attempt to twitch. And shortly, my baby girl starts to wail.

Fucking hell, I sit up from the saggy spring mattress with a deep growl. I don’t mind waking up for a feeding -- I’m used to those 3rd shift nights that end at 7am, those 11am nights made from black garbage bags tapped to the windows -- but god damn to hell and back, my back’s just not been the same since the coal mine collapse. These city mattresses ain’t used to bigger folk neither, so sitting up’s both a feat and relief. The metal coils sigh with me, as the baby starts to wail louder. Gotta good set of lungs on her. We were proud of that, back when the air we breathed was thick from coal dust.

The air down here under the plate is mostly smog, not all that different from coal dust, yet it lacks a certain grit about it. Back home, down yonder in the basin of Corel, coal dust would leave plumes in a man’s wake. I don’t think I could count the times that I heard Momma fussing at Dad for the deep black footprints embedded into the bathroom basin. But smog don't track like that, even if the end effect of it’s all the same: Itchy skin. Respiratory infections. Lungs painted black. None of us ever had pure white clothes except on Sunday, and that was only ‘cause we all but bought out the bleach from the Company store. But we all shared the same rattle in our lungs. That tickle in our throat that never would quite leave. So hearing my baby cry for her Papa is worth every imaginary gil in my pocket. 

I don’t think city folk much get the idea of _Papa._ I gathered so much from Tifa, who doesn’t call her landlady Auntie nor Granny, only Miss Meryl. Our level of respects are different. Under the plate, they don’t quite get ranks and names like us dirt folk, like us coal miner trash— we give a true meaning to all them titles. Like my Marlene. She’s not my child if we’re speaking by blood, but she’s my daughter in all the ways that count. I’m the face she sees when she opens her teary eyes and peers out of the drawer we’re using for a crib. It’s me she reaches for with her little chubby fingers. Her cry has turned into a sniffle by the time I reach her. Marlene’s little bottom lip is curled into her gums. Those fine fragile strands of brown hair have turned into something like a halo as she tosses against the pillow. She wants love — and milk. Something nurturing in every way. I’ll be that for her. She’s mine. My baby girl.

What was my right arm now ends in a nub, cut off at my forearm. But it’s enough for Marlene to nestle against. She sighs and whimpers against my bare chest, all the while I struggle to turn the tap with my clumsy left hand. The spigot to the double layered water filter is clunky and stiff, so after 8 ounces in the baby bottle, the excess falls to the dirt floor. Little puddles of mud underneath bare feet. It’s Shinra’s fault that this water for Marlene’s formula is so precious. 

Fuck Shinra. That blonde asshole president. Bread and circus my ass. Maybe for plate folks. What circus is there for us on the outlands? What bread is there except for trade for script at the Shinra company store? The way I see it, It’s Shinra's name on a hell of a lot of death certificates. I shouldn’t be this angry -- people that look like me are called angry as some sort of “gotcha”. Yeah, I get it. I’m the big angry black guy. Dumb spoutin’ off, foul mouthed mother fuckin Corel coal miner. But I got a damn good reason to be angry, don’t you think? Maybe I’m tired of selling my soul to some city big-wig who wouldn’t step one imported leather sole on to the dirt that’s making him rich. My anger is fueled by a good trail of bodies and broken families behind me. Momma, Dyne, Myrna, Eleanor —

_I feel arteries tear. There’s a bone that I just can’t get free. There’s black damp just behind the boulder. They ain’t no one coming for us, Dyne. They ain’t no one coming for us. Can you hear me? Can anyone hear when I scream?_

_All that’s left is me, and this whisper-thin air._

Can’t even the Good Lord tell me that I ain’t got a right to be mad.

‘Cause I got a right to be mad. 

I snap back into reality. I feel the coal dust rattle in my lungs. No, It ain’t just me now. It’s me and this baby. She’s my world — All 14 and a half pounds of her. I rock her with all the gentleness I’ve ever known. She quiets instantly. At 7 months old, I wonder who and what she remembers. My grandest hope is that she remembers her home, her actual mother and father before they died in the coal camp. My biggest fear is she remembers the hunger, the heat, for those hours while the Shinra greed tried to burn our town to the ground. I know it ain’t right that she’s waking up for a feeding at 9 months old. She’s too small too, I think. Auntie — I guess it’s Miss —Miss Meryl tells me not to fret about it. That all them books I read are for upper-plate babies. That it’s gonna be different for each child. She says I’m not doing as bad as I think I am. It’s just that we’ve all been through a whole damn lot. 

Guess it makes sense. The folks that lose their homes to corporate greed ain’t those writing books. What do those company men know about losing an arm? What do they know about working underground? ‘Bout sharing one rescue breather amongst the entire crew of thirteen? Feels like I’m the last soul alive that knows tale about being in the dark, ‘bout having to beat on mine bolts and plates, just hoping for a responsive blast or shot for the surface. 

What do they know about holding an underweight baby in a cold and dark basement of a ramshackle bar? Guess we’re refugees now, even if it doesn’t feel like it when I hold her between the stump of my right arm and my chest. I try to shake the formula back and forth in the bottle with my left hand. Feels shockingly like some everyday kind of act. Just a Papa and his baby. I”m just shaking a bottle. Just back and forth.

_“They gonna leave us down here, Dyne. I got the rescue breather now. I can’t keep passing it back and forth. Back and forth. It’s one of us or the other, Dyne. You got the baby. Go back to Marlene and Eleanor.”_

_“But you’re at the exit, Bare. Go. Go. One of us has got to get out. If ain’t nobody comin', who's gonna get to air first?”_

I think back to those dozen men. I really am the last soul alive from Shinra Coal Camp Number Nine. Last of the old Corel. I am the last soul alive to remember having to abandon our escape attempt and return to the coal rib. That long cold silence spent within those 30 square feet, trying to lay as low as possible.Shallow breaths they say -- as if we could take anything more. I don’t think there was more of my sanity or arm left at that point. My heart was beating, but the blood just pumped right out of my veins. If Dyne -- if Marlene’s dad was still alive -- I think he’d have felt my hand go limp. My right hand —

It’s gone now, cut up to the elbow. Damn things rotting under the ground of my old home town. I hold Marlene with the stump of my right arm, as I try to shake the formula powder back and forth in the bottle with my left. 

Maybe in another couple thousand years it’ll become the coal for some other young gun to mine up. That’s the way of things, ain’t it. A big circle. I, like my father before me, and his father before him were coal miners. They gave their souls for pieces of company script. My mother, like her mother before her, spent her waking hours carefully wrapping turkey sandwiches into a dented and scarred dinner bucket. The matriarchs of our family spent their day times, using that nervous energy to scrub the coal dust from the tile, the wood, the clothing — all part of the roles we played in old coal camp Corel. 

I hold Marlene closer. She will do neither. She ain’t gonna be given a role, not like we all were, with written into a script before we could even talk. I heard tell of our destinies. A man’s made out of mud supposedly. But a poor man. Reckon, we’re made of muscle and blood. A mind that’s weak. A back that’s strong. A man can work with his back, or with his mind. I’ve done my time working with my back, but this is all I got to show for it — all coal dust and smog. All coal black blood and dented dinner buckets.

All I gots is this baby girl Marlene Wallace. She’s gonna work with her mind. She’s gonna be a sharp one. If she’s anything like her father -- Dyne, not me, her Papa, but her biological father -- she’ll know evil a sharp mile a way. 

...I guess.. I just wasn't sharp enough. That’s why I got my arm turning into coal in that dark dungeon. I could cuss my shovel, my pick, my carbide lamp - but it's me ain’t it? I’m the one who didn’t see it. I fought for that reactor. I thought it would keep us safer than the underground. I thought that teal green steam was safer than that two mile deep hole in the Corel Mines.  
I thought Mako would be safer than not knowing if I”d come back, safer than that black damp between daddy’s boots and Papaw’s lamps. I didn’t want the Tipple to be my gravestone. I just thought --

I was wrong, wasn’t I Myrna? She always told me I was too trusting. Sweet as honey cornbread, she’d say. I remember running those missing fingers along the soft curve of Myrna’s nose, watching as the coal dust kept my handprint against her beautiful dark skin.

_My visions going black. I think I hear singing -- Myrna's by me in the chapel with a hymn book in her hand. We drove to church together. I can clearly see it -- we're were young, riding in my old man’s pick up truck, driving so fast around those dirt roads that I was drunk with the freedom. Freedom away from the coal camp, away from the future that was closing in on me. My momma's standing on the porch front of the weathered old coal house, her baggy old t-shirt hanging off her. She's was alwaysbeen a bit thin. Always a bit sad. But 17 year old me, in that moment, I didn’t care. It's me and my highschool sweetheart. My Myrna, soon-to-be-Wallace. All wonderful brown eyes and hair in those puffs on top of her head. Those distant lights of the city stretched out before us — the feeling of my right arm around her shoulder is etched in my head until this very day._

_. ...but then the right hand becomes heavy — a pickaxe and shovel holds me down as the mantrip starts its descent into the miles of the underground. The black damp's erasing my mind There's another rumble, rumble, deep inside my chest. The coal seams cracking. The rats trying to gnaw on the broken skin go a scurring. All lamps go black._

_Shinra doesn’t tell you this, but you can feel bones break. There’s not a lot of screaming. It’s hard to do with all that bad air. Lungs collapse. Brain’s start to bleed. Mostly there’s a lot of praying. A lot of singing. The slow realization that no one will come for us. T Here's nothing but methane in my lungs now._

_“Dyne no -- we ain’t dying for no coal vein. We ain’t dying for the North Face. The drills will find us --”_

_“They’re sealing the shaft up -- I smell that sulfur fire. I’mma get my soul right cause they’re sealing us up, man. I ain’t gonna make it, Barret -- I ain’t --”_

And he didn’t.

I guess -- those twelve other men -- they just didn’t. 

They’re all entombed in the same coal seam they mined. Ain’t no one even went in for their bodies. They used to do that, ya know. They used to drag the bodies out and lay them out at the local high school gymnasium. Reckon it didn’t do much good. I know my old man was only recognizable by his mine tag. It's a sight I reckon my momma never recovered from. Another body, another death, all black like the coal seems. All blue like the Mako. All red like the fire they set to the town to cover their sins.

Dyne didn't even get that. Ain't none of those twelve got that. They got sealed in with the sulfur fire. And now, I reckon I’m the last damn one, down here in the slums. 

The constant white-noise of the pillars sucking the energy from the core of the Planet ringing in my ears. Suddenly these sparse particle board walls around us seem oddly protective against the smog. It’s funny like that, ain’t it? I relish in the peace of our own smog filled paradise, as I start to rock Dyne’s baby girl — Marlene Wallace. The Tower of our People. Like I said before, our names have meaning. Our level of respects are different. We ain’t like them under plate folk. I get the name Dyne gave her. 

The baby begins to quiet. She smiles at me before babbling something full of consonants. There’s no Papa yet, no mama or dada —she doesn’t know -- She doesn’t need to know what happened in the mines that day. I will leave out the part where I used the leverage of the chunk of feldspar to break my own ulna and radius -- the names of which I didn’t know until I made my way to a doctor in the Saucer area. She will not know the part of the story where I used electrician shears to cut through my tendons.

All she needs to know is that her daddy was brave. I would even brave the word “cunning”. Brain as smart as a tack with a mouth to match. If I could explain to her my Myrna I would say Kind. Firm. Ready to whip me if I stayed out too late at the pub, but ready to cry on my shoulder if it was late coming home from the mine. Her biological mother was much the same. The women from Corel were mama lions -- not to be messed with.

Her history will be told as such: She is the product of the earth. All mud, bone, muscle and blood. She is the diamonds under the earth that we covert. The coal that we depend on. She's form hard working men, and long-suffering women. Of Sunday services and old hymns. All she needs to know is that we will win. Old Corel is alive, the dirt is rich with the bodies they buried.

I rock the baby in the darkness and tell them our story. They tried to bury us mountain folk. Us poor foul mouthed miners. But they didn’t know we were seeds, baby girl.

We're the seeds.

**Author's Note:**

> ((notes: arm breaking scene from 127 hours, Aron Ralston who actually sawed off his own trapped arm  
> The story of the Sago mine disaster --https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sago_Mine_disaster  
> The story of FInley Mine disaster -- mother saw the mangled bodies at her highschool gym. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Creek_mine_disaster  
> THe story of Muddy Coal Mine’s South illinois mine disaster -- https://usminedisasters.miningquiz.com/saxsewell/big_muddy_news_only.htm  
> Bloody Harlan -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlan_County_War --  
> Mantrip -- little coal mine “cart” that takes men underground  
> Company store -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_store. A small store with limited goods that a mine company regards script in exchange for goods.  
> Mine TIpple — A tipple is a structure used at a mine to load the extracted product (e.g., coal, ores) for transport, typically into railroad hopper cars. In the United States, tipples have been frequently associated with coal mines, but they have also been used for hard rock mining.  
> Dinner bucket — metal tin old Appalachian miners used to carry their lunches in. Had a handle so they could hang up and away from the rats. 
> 
> I”m from two of these places :3 I have another Appalachian story for ff15 in the works if anyone's interested. ))


End file.
